significant cookbooks, pt. 1

Cooking is absolutely undoubtedly one of my favorite pastimes. And to be perfectly fair, I'd better broaden that to include most anything food-related. A conversation on a favorite food blog of mine, Serious Eats, had me trying desperately to remember what was the first cookbook I had bought with my own money. While I'm sure it will come to me eventually, all that reminiscing brought to mind a few influential cookbooks in my life. Here are three of them, with more sure to follow.

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Cook Book (revised and updated edition)

That bright pink cover instantly sends a wave of nostalgia through me. It was hanging around our home as long as I can remember, probably long before I arrived. The recipes in this book are rudimentary at best, and to be honest, I don't recall attempting that many of them. The ones I did try never seemed to turn out quite right; my impatient and slapdash nature was not conducive to making perfect curlicues out of carrot shavings.

But that didn't stop me from repeatedly poring over this book, learning all the variations on pancakes that the characters in Alice in Wonderland preferred (The Queen of Hearts likes hers with jelly, for example) and marveling at how Bambi and Thumper made such great-looking salads. This is also when I can first document my practice of reading cookbooks for fun, as each recipe had an anecdote to associate it with a Disney character, such as Winnie the Pooh enjoying custard or Sleeping Beauty dreaming about a spinning wheel-shaped donut. This book may not have gotten me cooking regularly, but it had me very badly wanting to cook, and to better understand it.

Nick Stellino's Glorious Italian Cooking
First things first, here: from this picture alone, it is clear that Nick Stellino owns you. He's wearing a cravat, for crying out loud. A cravat that matches his cherry red belt. And while it's not quite clear in the photo, he most assuredly has a handle bar mustache. That's quite a bit of awesome right there.

But more to the point, this cookbook is especially endeared to me as it is the first one my parents ever gave me. I'm pretty sure it was Christmas of either 1999 or 2000, when I was rather young still. I had never openly professed an interest in cooking, nor had I asked for a cookbook of any kind, but my parents were smart ones. When I became so enamored with a recipe printed in my sixth grade health book that I had to make it for my mom - it was a spinach frittata, for which I used far too much garlic - they took notice. And my dad was especially clever, as in the years to come, my annual Christmas cookbook gift was immediately followed by him selecting just which recipes I would make for him.

This book turned out to be quite a good one, to boot, and one that I still refer to today. Looking back, I'm surprised at how many of the recipes I attempted at a fairly young age, like apricot chicken, roasted pork loin, cantaloupe granita, and sauteed artichokes, which I believe was the first thing I ever made from the book. It was from Nick Stellino that I first encountered the recipe that I would eventually adapt and change to make my go-to pasta sauce, always available in a pinch. It was also from him that I added a shrimp and asparagus pasta to my arsenal, one that my mom still loves. I discovered new ingredients, like capers and shallots, and valuable techniques, like deglazing. Perhaps most importantly, Glorious Italian Cooking taught me not to be afraid of being flexible in the kitchen - don't have fresh herbs? Use dried! Chicken broth often works as a substitute for wine, or you could just leave it out all together. Its lack of pictures took the pressure off getting the food to look exactly right. I learned that though the results might not be the same, that didn't mean they wouldn't be good, which in turn made me more comfortable and intuitive in the kitchen.


How To Be A Domestic Goddess - Nigella Lawson


This was the first book of cookery I can recall making a request for, as I was infatuated with its author. Nigella's short-lived Nigella Bites television series completely enchanted me: the nonchalance about very gluttonous ingredients, the tight camera shots that I had not previously encountered on a cooking show, the end bit that always had her rummaging through her fridge at night to pull out an indulgent snack. Nigella made cooking and eating something glamorous and humorous.

The title of this book is a good example of that, and one of the reasons I wanted this book specifically. From it, I've discovered some real gems, like lemon syrup cake, pavlovas of all kinds, and my once infamous baklava muffins. I also embraced Nigella's attitude of looking at food more from the perspective of an eater - make your food as delicious as possible rather than as complicated as possible.